FLEISS DOCUMENTARY A GUILTY PLEASURE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Documentaries are rarely associated with entertainment. Even crowd-pleasing efforts like "Hoop Dreams" tend to have an off-putting air of being good for you about them.

Happily, this is not the case with "Heidi Fleiss Hollywood Madam." Besides its built-in sleaze factor, this tongue-in-cheek attempt to get to the bottom of Los Angeles' biggest prostitution scandal is consistently hilarious and, in the end, a fascinating character study. It's so much fun to watch, in fact, that you very quickly forget you came in hoping to learn which famous names are in Heidi's infamous black book (you don't).

What starts out as a major setback ends up working in award-winning British documentarian Nick Broomfield's ("Soldier Girls," "Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer") favor. He was scheduled to interview Heidi on the day she was ordered into a drug rehab program, which forced Broomfield to fend for himself while the skittish ex-"madam to the stars" dodged his cameras for months afterward.

So Broomfield tried to get the lowdown from lower-rung workers in Los Angeles' sex industry. Sunset Boulevard hookers weren't very enlightening. Zoned-out porn-makers weren't very, well, incisive.

But Broomfield finally hit pay dirt with Ivan Nagy, the sometime director, alleged pimp and Heidi's former boyfriend, and his arch-nemesis Madam Alex, the late queen of Hollywood prostitution who Heidi all but ran out of business. Superb obfuscators both, Nagy and Alex recount Fleiss' rise and fall while furthering personal agendas only they understand (and maybe even they don't get it).

But Broomfield doesn't stop with these talkative tattlers. He loves beginning interviews with people like former police Chief Daryl Gates by filming them counting the cash he's just paid for their, um, services. While many documentary makers wax tediously about the moral implications of intruding on their subject's lives, Broomfield turns it into a gleeful joke every time he pays for say. The implication that we're all hookers, johns or voyeurs is the only thing that goes without saying - and it sure doesn't need to be said.

Finally, after many months and a pandering conviction, Fleiss sits down for a long interview. She comes off as charming - shrewd in a shallow way and as deftly deceptive as Nagy or Alex. But when Broomfield goes back to Nagy for a response to Heidi's statements, the film lurches in an unexpected direction. Sex and money suddenly seem a lot less interesting than the bizarre ways love twists people's heads.

Among its many other amusements, "Hollywood Madam" is a great audience-participation film. When Heidi recites some of the lame fantasies one joker gave her $40,000 a night to recite, a guy at the screening I attended stood up and exclaimed, "Does anybody else here feel underpaid for what you do?"

You bet we did. But I dare say most of us came out of the theater feeling our relationships were a lot healthier than we'd assumed beforehand. It was clear that no amount of money could make up for the kind of obsessional weirdness Ivan and Heidi put each other through.

Whoops, that sounds alarmingly like saying "Heidi Fleiss Hollywood Madam" may be good for you. Don't be put off. This movie combines all the prurient pleasures of daytime talk shows, prime-time soaps and tabloid TV.

Better yet, it's all true. Except for the lies.

THE FACTS

The film: "Heidi Fleiss Hollywood Madam" (not rated; language, nudity).

The stars: Heidi Fleiss, Ivan Nagy, Madam Alex, Daryl Gates.

Behind the scenes: Produced and directed by Nick Broomfield. Released by International Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 47 minutes.

Playing: Nuart, West Los Angeles.

Our rating: Three Stars.

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PHOTO

Photo Heidi Fleiss eludes, then appears before the camera in the documentary "Heidi Fleiss Hollywood Madam."